Family Guy: "Business Guy" Review

Peter takes over Pewterschmidt Industries.

Peter throws a bachelor party for Carter Pewterschmidt, who has a heart attack and ends up in a coma. Lois is given control of her father's company, but decides that she has no idea how to run a company and instead makes the mistake of letting Peter take over in her place.

As you'd expect, giving the keys of a billion dollar company to Peter Griffin leads to some pretty disastrous results. Before coming onboard and firing the entire board of directors, Pewterschmidt Industries seemed to be doing very well financially. Peter decides to change the company's direction and comes up with some ridiculously creative but pointless product ideas such as "Jeremy Irons Cereal," "an African American heart monitor" and "Scream in a Box." Given the fact that he had billions to play with, one might have expected a bit more from Peter's propensity to come up with pointless ideas. The African American heart monitor was pretty funny though, especially considering the fact that it thoughtfully came with two settings: Barry White and Bill Cosby.

Hugh Laurie makes a guest appearance here playing his character from House. He gets to do a bit of self mockery as he tends to the comatose Mr. Pewterschmidt, but other than that, he doesn't get too many funny lines here. The Scooby-Doo inspired chase sequence with the Swamp Monster was a nicely done homage, and revealing House as the man in the costume was another way to bring the character back.

There were some classic gross Family Guy gags here. Normally, vomit jokes end up feeling like pointless fillers, but both puke gags in this episode worked incredibly well. Lois' puking was nothing special, but Brian eating it put that joke over the top. Similarly, Peter taking the effort to sharpen a pencil just right so that he can puke and get Carter to clean it up was hilarious.

Other funny moments included the cutaway to the absurdly violent German bedtime story. Peter tormenting Carter was pretty funny too, especially when he tried to get him to put together a Big Bang Theory party. The fact that he Carter started liking the show at the end was pretty funny. Also amusing was the final segment of the episode where Peter gets stuck mid-air after jumping for joy when he finds out that he gets to keep the company jet. The fact that Peter suggests he needs a scientist's help to him get down was the type of absurd gag that worked really well for the show in the past, and it's great to see the writers choose absurdity over the thinly veiled political jabs that we're subjected to all too frequently in recent years.

From start to finish, this episode felt like a throwback to the earlier more successful seasons. A consistent storyline from start to finish and a strong emphasis on absurdities instead of pointless political statements made this one of the stronger episodes of the season. On a night highlighted by the gut-wrenching Dexter season finale, the lighthearted clever humor of this episode was definitely welcome.